]]>Should organ donors of particular religious traditions be able to specify that their donation go only to co-religionists? Throughout the U.S. there is a dramatic shortage of people willing to give up one of their organs to save a stranger’s life. It’s a difficult problem for the many patients needing a new kidney, especially among African Americans. One solution, as the Orthodox Jewish charity called Renewal has found, is to connect organ donors with sick patients within their own faith communities, which encourages more people to donate. Leaders of other faith groups, among them African-American churches, are using the Renewal approach in their own communities in order to encourage more organ donations. But what are the ethics of donating organs only within specific communities of faith rather than to anybody?

LUCKY SEVERSON: They live conspicuously pious lives in a secular world, especially in enclaves and suburbs of New York. Ultra Orthodox Hasidic Jews observe the strict rules of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and its 613 commandments.

Their structured lifestyle seems to work for the majority. But, for some, the lack of choices is too rigid, so they choose to leave, even though doing so can be very painful. Hasidic groups remain some of the most insular religious sects in the U.S. Sol Feuerwerker knows, he was one of them.

SOL FEUERWERKER: I think that’s what surprises most people, you know, most outsiders, is that how can something this insular be happening right here in the middle of New York City. You know, as I’ve moved farther away from it, it kind of shocks me too actually.

CHANI GETTER: When I tell people that I grew up 30 miles north of New York, that I went into the city and I had never seen a movie before I was in my 20s, they think I’m insane.

SEVERSON: Chani Getter grew up, married and had three children before she broke away from her Hasidic community. Those who leave Hasidism paint a picture of a very puritanical and sheltered way of life.

GETTER: When I left, I moved into my own apartment and I started driving, and as a woman who was driving, my parents disowned me. In our sect, women did not drive. And so, for eight years, they didn’t talk to me.

SEVERSON: In Hebrew, the word Hasidim translates to mean the “pious ones.” They are defined by their devotion to a hereditary leader known as the “Rebbe”, by their distinctive clothing and Yiddish language. Professor Samuel Heilman is a Jewish scholar at Queens College.

PROFESSOR SAMUEL HEILMAN: They have everything that makes up a culture, social norms, language, a career pattern in life. Even the ones who leave say that there are aspects of their lives that they left behind that they miss. To go to a Hasidic gathering and to sing the songs and to dance in the circle and to be enfolded into the community, and to hear your voice in a chorus of other voices. This is a tremendously exciting experience and when you leave and you’re all alone, all alone in the city…

SEVERSON: Professor Heilman says there are as many as 350 thousand Hasidic Orthodox in the U.S. and Canada, and an even larger population in Israel. And the numbers are increasing fast, he says, because Hasidism strongly encourages very large families.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: They don’t believe in birth control. They believe that the commandment of “be fruitful and multiply” is incumbent upon all Jewish people and they practice it. Not only do they have large families but they are the poorest of all Jews because they don’t go to college, so they lack often some of the skills that are necessary for high income. They are all literate in Jewish education, but their secular education is limited. That is not to say there are not some who are successful…in the diamond business, electronics business, in trading on Wall Street.

SEVERSON: Relatively few leave, in professor Heilman’s view, because they’ve been taught to shun the secular world.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: They’ve been told that the world outside their own is demonic, corrosive, dangerous, they wouldn’t want to be part of it, that they live a superior kind of life.

GETTER: One of the things that they teach you is that we get to choose what we allow our eyes to see. We get to choose what we allow our ears to hear. And so when you go into the city, you make a conscious choice not to allow your eyes to see.

FEUERWERKER: There’s this whole, like belief or narrative in the community that if you, if you try to break away or change you will fail and you won’t be happy and you’ll just end up on drugs.

SEVERSON: Lani Santo is the Executive Director of a non-profit group called Footsteps, founded in 2003, not to proselytize but to provide counsel and support to those who want to explore life outside the confines of the world in which they were raised. They’ve assisted over 700 altogether so far, a majority are young men.

LANI SANTO: We are seeing a lot more, just in this year alone, we’ve seen a 60% increase in our membership and in new people coming to us, and that’s compared to a 35% increase that we’ve been on for the last few years.

SEVERSON: In the past, it was easier to shelter those in ultra religious communities from the outside world. Television, magazines, radio, even libraries were off limits. Then along came the internet.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: The internet is a real problem for them. There has been, there have been efforts, for example there was a recent gathering at Citi Field here in New York that was against the internet. But it’s a case of trying to close the barn after the horses are out.

SEVERSON: Lani Santo says those who do leave suffer serious bouts of loneliness and guilt.

SANTO: It’s more about guilt in terms of impacting their families. If they have younger siblings, the fact that they’re leaving is putting at risk the marriage prospects for their younger siblings and that’s a real challenge.

PROFESSOR HEILMAN: Marriage is critical. And it’s all by matchmaking. Finding single people in this community is rare, and if they’re single then it means they’re problematic…and problematic can be that you have someone in the family who’s not Orthodox or that there’s some mental or physical ailment in the family or that there are, it can even be somebody has too many people with red hair in the family.

SANTO: Any mark of difference is a mark of shame. So whether it’s a mark of having a child that’s leaving the community, whether it’s a mark of having a child that’s sexually abused or whether there’s some sort of ailment in the family, um, or someone who’s committed suicide, all of that will be covered up.

MICHAEL JENKINS: The first thing that really struck me was the courage in the room.

SEVERSON: Michael Jenkins is Footsteps’ senior social worker. He says he’s amazed at the risks young Hasidim are taking by even walking through the front door. He conducts group therapy and private counseling, says a number of people he meets with lead dual and deeply conflicted lives, with one foot in their Hasidic community and one foot out.

JENKINS: There’s things in the community that I love, that work for me, family, friendships, relationships … this is where I’ve always been and this is where I want to be, yet there are things that I disagree with…and I want to be able to talk about that or express that somewhere else.

FOOTSTEPS GROUP DISCUSSION: “I want to be who I want to be. And if I find God, I find God on my own, you know? I don’t go any more according to what I was told as a kid.”

SEVERSON: In Hasidic communities, young men study the Torah in Hebrew at least 7 hours a day and spend only one hour on secular education. So those who leave are woefully unprepared to go out on their own. Sol was 19 when he broke away.

(to Feuerwerker): What was your education level at that point?

FEUERWERKER: If I had to estimate it would probably be, you know 4th or 5th grade.

SEVERSON: Was that pretty standard for most of the men of your age?

FEUERWERKER: That’s the norm, yeah. And in fact I believe I was actually a little bit more advanced than some of my friends at the time.

SEVERSON: Another consequence of the insularity is that if a crime is committed, it often goes unreported.

FEUERWERKER: I have many friends, men and women who have been abused, sexually, physically, emotionally…

SEVERSON: Sol is now in his 4th year as a pre-med student. He says it hasn’t been easy. Some old friends speak to him, some don’t. He says he has a message for others who are worried about leaving the sheltered world of Hasidism.

FEUERWERKER: My point is it’s challenging and it looks really, really scary at the beginning. Um, but it’s, it’s possible.

SEVERSON: Chani Getter says Footsteps has made leaving the Hasidic community a little less scary.

GETTER: Since Footsteps opened the thing that I saw different is that when people used to leave the community before it would be through alcohol and drugs. In order for them to leave, they had to become a total outcast.

SEVERSON: When Chani left, her parents were traumatized, and then she announced that she is gay. Now she’s studying to be a rabbi.

GETTER: They’re hurt by the fact that I will not live, you know, that kind of life, because my soul is in danger. And yet they don’t understand why my eyes sparkle and why I’m so happy.

SEVERSON: As the world continues to shrink because of access to modern technology, like the internet, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for anyone or any group to shield their families from the outside world.

]]>On the news of his death in Jerusalem on February 10, we reprise excerpts from managing editor Kim Lawton’s 1999 interview with this eminent Jewish philosopher, leader of liberal Orthodoxy, and founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute who said, “I believe that the fundamental mission of the Jewish people is to be a vision of pluralism and inclusiveness.”

BENYAMIN COHEN (Author of “My Jesus Year”): I grew up in the heart of the Bible belt in Atlanta, Georgia, one of eight children, the son of an Orthodox rabbi. I’m the only one that didn’t go into the family business. They are all rabbis or married rabbis.

I was always jealous. I grew up across the street from a Methodist church, and literally my bedroom window looked out at the church parking lot, and every Sunday morning I would see it was packed, and living in the Bible belt there are churches on every street corner, and their parking lots are full every week. Maybe I could go to church—not to convert to Christianity. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to go to find out what got people excited about worship, what got people excited about their religion. Maybe I could go and tap into that spirituality and find out the secret that I was never taught growing up, and maybe I could bring that back and apply it to my own Judaism.

Here’s one thing that I learned. I haven’t even walked into a church, and here’s already one thing I could write down and tell my rabbi—first-time visitor parking. I’m not talking about bringing Jesus into the synagogue. It wouldn’t hurt, it wouldn’t kill you to put a little first-time visitor parking sign in the parking lot.

I didn’t know going to church that they talk about the Old Testament. I assumed Jews have the Old Testament and Christians have the New Testament. I didn’t realize they have both, and this pastor got up and started giving an Old Testament sermon, and the way he was describing his interpretation was completely antithetical to what I had learned growing up. What came out of that moment was that I didn’t realize I cared so much about my own Bible.

At this Episcopal church they had a ritualistic service every week, and they had these nice traditions, and I was like that’s such a nice, sweet thing to have traditions and ancient rituals. I was like that sounds familiar. We have that in synagogue, and it kind of made me look at my own rituals with a new, fresh perspective.

Orthodox Jewry and Mormonism have a lot in common. We are both minorities in America. We both have special dietary—they can’t drink caffeine, and we have to keep kosher. They wear special undergarments, we wear special undergarments. There’s a lot of laws that dictate all their lives, and so for me I felt a real kinship with the Mormon community, and I went knocking door to door with these two female Mormon missionaries, and their conviction, these are girls 19- and 20-years-old, and their conviction for their religion was just awe-inspiring to me. I’m sure the woman whose house we were visiting, I’m sure she’s wondering why the Mormons brought their accountant with them. You know, what is he doing here?

I was feeling guilty at the end of the year that I kind of strayed from my own religion, and so I wanted to cleanse myself of that guilt, so I did what any good Jewish boy does, and that’s go to confession. I asked my Catholic friend, Vince, if I could do this, and he said, “No, only Catholics can go to confession, but I will sneak you in.” It was a very meaningful spiritual experience, and an interesting postscript to that whole episode is that the priest, now that the book has come out, the priest actually knows that I went to confession with him, and he called me and thanked me. He is so happy that I had a meaningful experience with him.

I for one feel a lot closer to a religious Christian than I do a non-religious Jew, because we have so much in common. People ask me if I found Jesus in church, and I personally did not, so to speak, find Jesus, but what I did find was true spirituality. That’s what I found in these places: the lack of cynicism, the openness to the experience, and the belief in God, whoever that God may be.

BENYAMIN COHEN (Author of “My Jesus Year”): I grew up in the heart of the Bible belt in Atlanta, Georgia, one of eight children, the son of an Orthodox rabbi. I’m the only one that didn’t go into the family business. They are all rabbis or married rabbis.

I was always jealous. I grew up across the street from a Methodist church, and literally my bedroom window looked out at the church parking lot, and every Sunday morning I would see it was packed, and living in the Bible belt there are churches on every street corner, and their parking lots are full every week. Maybe I could go to church—not to convert to Christianity. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to go to find out what got people excited about worship, what got people excited about their religion. Maybe I could go and tap into that spirituality and find out the secret that I was never taught growing up, and maybe I could bring that back and apply it to my own Judaism.

Here’s one thing that I learned. I haven’t even walked into a church, and here’s already one thing I could write down and tell my rabbi—first-time visitor parking. I’m not talking about bringing Jesus into the synagogue. It wouldn’t hurt, it wouldn’t kill you to put a little first-time visitor parking sign in the parking lot.

I didn’t know going to church that they talk about the Old Testament. I assumed Jews have the Old Testament and Christians have the New Testament. I didn’t realize they have both, and this pastor got up and started giving an Old Testament sermon, and the way he was describing his interpretation was completely antithetical to what I had learned growing up. What came out of that moment was that I didn’t realize I cared so much about my own Bible.

At this Episcopal church they had a ritualistic service every week, and they had these nice traditions, and I was like that’s such a nice, sweet thing to have traditions and ancient rituals. I was like that sounds familiar. We have that in synagogue, and it kind of made me look at my own rituals with a new, fresh perspective.

Orthodox Jewry and Mormonism have a lot in common. We are both minorities in America. We both have special dietary—they can’t drink caffeine, and we have to keep kosher. They wear special undergarments, we wear special undergarments. There’s a lot of laws that dictate all their lives, and so for me I felt a real kinship with the Mormon community, and I went knocking door to door with these two female Mormon missionaries, and their conviction, these are girls 19- and 20-years-old, and their conviction for their religion was just awe-inspiring to me. I’m sure the woman whose house we were visiting, I’m sure she’s wondering why the Mormons brought their accountant with them. You know, what is he doing here?

I was feeling guilty at the end of the year that I kind of strayed from my own religion, and so I wanted to cleanse myself of that guilt, so I did what any good Jewish boy does, and that’s go to confession. I asked my Catholic friend, Vince, if I could do this, and he said, “No, only Catholics can go to confession, but I will sneak you in.” It was a very meaningful spiritual experience, and an interesting postscript to that whole episode is that the priest, now that the book has come out, the priest actually knows that I went to confession with him, and he called me and thanked me. He is so happy that I had a meaningful experience with him.

I for one feel a lot closer to a religious Christian than I do a non-religious Jew, because we have so much in common. People ask me if I found Jesus in church, and I personally did not, so to speak, find Jesus, but what I did find was true spirituality. That’s what I found in these places: the lack of cynicism, the openness to the experience, and the belief in God, whoever that God may be.

At the core of personal trauma there is often a loss of faith in life’s order and stability. When faced with a crisis, some people turn to religion. Others turn to artistic expression. David Gelernter turned to both, and his new book Judaism: A Way of Being (Yale University Press, 2009) displays a unique entwining of the two.

Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University whose scientific mind has long looked toward the future, some say predicted it. The “tuple spaces” paradigm for parallel distributed computing that he introduced in the 1980s became the basis of many computer communication and programming systems. His book Mirror Worlds (Oxford University Press, 1991) is said to have foreseen the Internet and inspired the programming language Java.

In June 1993, while going through a stack of mail in his Yale office, Gelernter opened a package he believed was a doctoral dissertation. Smoke billowed out and the package exploded. It was a mail bomb sent by Ted Kaczynski, the man the FBI dubbed the Unabomber, and it permanently damaged Gelernter’s right hand and eye.

Gelernter recovered from his injuries but emerged an impassioned conservative critic of American life and politics. In recent years, he has traced America’s moral decline to a class of intellectuals he says came to the fore as the country’s new elite in the 1960s, hijacked cultural discourse, and corrupted social values.

If the bombing prompted political polemic, it also drew Gelernter closer to religion. This is not to say he was new to Judaism. David Hillel Gelernter, the grandson of a rabbi, grew up a Reform Jew. Before he decided on computer science he received a master’s degree in Hebrew Bible. The Orthodox Judaism he has turned to more recently, however, and that he celebrates in his new book is the one he sees as pure and authentic, the kind of religion capable of drawing the world back into secure order. It is Judaism without the complexity introduced by gender equality and other modern revolutions. Gelernter presents himself as a local guide to the faith, offering to lead Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike into what he calls “the inner courtyard” of Judaism to see what cannot be seen from the outside. His book, he claims, is “Judaism at full strength, straight up; no water, no soda, aged in oak for three thousand years.”

For Gelernter, to understand Judaism you must see it. Far from being allergic to images, Judaism is a religious tradition passionate about the beauty and aesthetics of life. The Hebrew Bible is itself pictorial, with stories and lessons conveyed through vivid imagery, from the dove with an olive branch in its beak to the Burning Bush. “Judaism,” Gelernter writes, “tells Jews what is right—and adorns the bare thread of human life with sanctity, jewel-by-jewel, until a Jewish life glows with soft color: warm amber and silver, cool fragrant yellow and glowing orange and translucent purple-rose.”

Gelernter is an artist, after all, and considers painting the oldest strand of his personal history. He took art lessons as a child, and as a teenager living on Long Island traveled regularly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan to copy Degas in pencil and charcoal. When he lost function in his right hand after the bombing, what worried him most was his ability to continue painting. Slowly, Gelernter learned to use his left hand the way he once used his right, and so painting has remained central to his identity and intellect.

Images are also central to his book, structured around four “image-themes” (separation, veil, perfect asymmetry, and inward pilgrimage) that outline the codes and aesthetics of what Gelernter says is a “common Judaism.” “My basic themes take the form of images,” he explains, “because Judaism is less a system of belief than a way of living, a particular texture of time.” Each theme conveys one central facet of Judaism and also serves as a microcosm of the religion as a whole.

The idea of separation refers to man’s struggle to transcend nature and create himself in God’s image. Many biblical images convey the essence of separation, such as the parting of the Red Sea, the waters forced apart at Creation, and the Torah scroll held wide and open in front of a synagogue congregation (a ritual called hagba). Separation, Gelernter explains, guides halakha, the set of Jewish laws that dictate religious practices and beliefs, as well as numerous aspects of daily life. Keeping kosher and setting the Sabbath apart from the work week as a day of rest are acts of separation that Jews are obliged to live by. These practices, says Gelernter, turn everyday life into a continuous process of sanctification.

The image-theme he calls “veil” conveys the principle that while one cannot see or know God, one can comprehend God’s inconceivablessness, symbolized by a sacred veil. Images of the veil in Judaism include Moses veiling his face at Mount Sinai after meeting with God, a prayer shawl or tallit draped over a person at prayer, the curtain hanging in front of the Holy Ark in a synagogue, and the mezuzah that encloses a small scroll of biblical text. These images, Gelernter suggests, can help us grasp the deeper and more elusive question of how man can engage with a transcendent, ineffable God.

There are those who will disagree with many of the views that run through Gelernter’s book, such as his claims that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in Western history; that God has withdrawn from the modern world; that Reform and Conservative Judaism do not work; and that the purpose of life is to marry and rear a family. In a chapter on his third theme, “perfect asymmetry,” on the importance of marriage and the family, Gelernter is not subtle about his social critique. He argues that the feminist effort for male and female equality “is an act of aggression against both sanctity and humanity.”

Aspects of the text are indeed narrow and partial, but the image-themes still allow for more expansive thinking. With the theme of “inward pilgrimage” Gelernter broaches the problem of how to reconcile a just God with the reality of a cruel world. Judaism tells us that lo bashamayim hi, “the Torah is not in heaven”; it must be interpreted and applied on earth. According to Gelernter, interrogation of the world around us and inner doubt are equal parts of the Jewish journey.

Eight glossy reproductions of paintings by Gelernter are tucked inside the book, products of his own journey. They are not illustrations of the image-themes, but rather colorful and delicate ornamentations of Jewish text, coming out of a tradition of illuminated manuscripts. Gelernter works with acrylic, collage, and gold leaf. Butterflies are a recurring motif. In one painting, the Hebrew phrase Ha’Mavdil bein kodesh l’chol, “Who separates between the sacred and the ordinary,” is enhanced with orange and magenta and bejeweled with a golden butterfly that helps form one of the letters. Marking the transition between sacred and secular time, this blessing is recited while holding a flickering candle at the end of the Sabbath. Gelernter’s artwork sanctifies the blessing, just as the thematic image of separation sanctifies life.

The indigo, cerulean, and crimson butterflies embedded in his paintings exemplify the delight that, for Gelernter, gives meaning to religious life. “Judaism is above all a religion of joy,” he asserts repeatedly throughout the book. At the center of “the vast, intricate, beautiful palace that is Judaism,” he writes, is “a thread of ecstasy…the whole word, space and time and suffering and all, pulled together by triumphant jubilation.”

The Judaism Gelernter lays out in Judaism may not be triumphant for everyone. While he claims to present the “whole” of Jewish life, some may find that a Judaism devoid of contemporary innovations lacks the interpretive essence so central to the religion. But Gelernter’s idea of image-themes and his own paintings succeed in areas where his text might not. They give permission to those who practice Judaism and those who study it to seek meaning and connection to the tradition not only through text but also through images, aesthetics, the senses, and the soft “glow” of color.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a story today about two young men who grew up together best friends — one white, one black — and then took different religious paths. One became an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, the other a Muslim. Today they argue, of course, but as Betty Rollin reports, they’ve found their theological differences don’t matter nearly as much as friendship and laughter.

BETTY ROLLIN: A couple of old friends shooting baskets — and not shooting baskets — in downtown New York City. Charlie Buckholtz and Sedar Chappelle met when they were in grade school in Silver Spring, Maryland. Charlie was not only the new kid in school, but one of the few white kids. He was having a hard time until Sedar came along.

SEDAR CHAPPELLE (to Charlie): You’re a very lucky man.

CHARLIE BUCKHOLTZ: Everyone respected him. He was sort of like the mayor of the school. So the fact that he kind of took me under his wing made it so that I was okay with everyone.

SEDAR: I went to summer camp, and at this summer camp I was the only black boy in this group of strangers, and I was very badly treated. So when I came back to school after the summer camp and meeting Charlie, the first thing that I did, I said, “Okay, this is the chance for me to take care of him, because I know how it feels.”

ROLLIN: The friendship grew, and at Charlie’s bar mitzvah there was Sedar, along with his later to be famous comedian brother, David Chappelle. Sedar and Charlie’s friendship continued throughout high school.

CHARLIE: I think that from the day we met each of us has always had a very profound sense that we have something to learn from each other.

ROLLIN: Then the accident.

CHARLIE: I was in this horrible car accident, and I was, I think, unconscious for a day or two, and I woke up heavily sedated with tubes in my chest.

SEDAR: They did not know whether he would live or die, and so I dropped everything, and I rushed over to the hospital as fast as possible.

MARJORIE BUCKHOLTZ (Charlie’s Mother): He got there, and I grabbed him and David, too, and we were, you know, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s get in there!” And we were stopped by this enormous battle-axe of a woman who said, “Where do you think they’re going?” And I said, “Well, they’re coming in to see Charlie.” And she said, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s family only.” And I said, “They’re my sons. And, I didn’t think about it, really, but she gave me such an incredulous look, and at which point David looked up and said, “Hey, don’t you watch ‘Different Strokes’ lady?” And she let them in.

SEDAR: It made me feel very warm and very welcomed. It gave me respect for Charlie and his family for the rest of my life.

ROLLIN: Neither Charlie nor Sedar were particularly religious growing up. Not until college did they begin their spiritual journeys.

SEDAR: I was going through this religious revival for Christianity. But the way that — but the racism that was at the Christian camp, it broke my heart completely, and so I was very confused at the church for a number of years. So when I went to college I started meeting Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I began to open my mind to other religions. Charlie was doing the same thing at the same time.

ROLLIN: Charlie’s journey led him to Israel, where he became an Orthodox rabbi.

CHARLIE (Praying in Hebrew): Adonai…

ROLLIN: Meanwhile, Sedar was exploring Islam. At first, there were new conflicts.

CHARLIE: When Sedar first started becoming involved in orthodox Islam there was definitely a feeling — he was very excited, he was a new convert, and he was definitely interested in converting me.

ROLLIN: Well, that could be very annoying.

CHARLIE: It was annoying. It was annoying. I mean, we were such old friends that we were sort of used to annoying each other and taking it in stride.

ROLLIN: There were other theological spats.

CHARLIE: There is a doctrine in his religion which he adheres to. The doctrine is that Islam is the kind of preferred religion. Other religions are acceptable. Other religions should be allowed to exist. But really Islam is the preferred religion.

ROLLIN: But don’t you feel that way about Judaism?

CHARLIE: No, that’s not a position that Judaism takes.

ROLLIN: Sedar also differs with Charlie about the question of the afterlife.

SEDAR: In his worldview, in his values, this world and this life is much more important to him than death or the life after death.

ROLLIN: And is that what’s important to you?

SEDAR: Well, for me, this life is temporary and temporal, and the life after death is eternal.

ROLLIN: Their theological differences, far from separating them, have just given them that much more to talk about.

CHARLIE (talking with Sedar at restaurant): There are still strong voices and strong strains. It seems that like that people are doing very, you know, bad sort of militant actions. Would you disagree with that?

SEDAR: Yeah, I would disagree with that.

CHARLIE: Really?

SEDAR: Yeah, I would disagree with that.

CHARLIE: Really?

SEDAR: To me I think it’s a very small percentage of people. Most Muslims, all they care about is family values.

ROLLIN: The most important part of the friendship, they say, is the wisdom shared from each religion.

CHARLIE: When I’m going through a hard time, it’s not always easy for me to find the wisdom in my own tradition that helps me to get through what I’m going through. But if I talk to Sedar about it and, you know, he’s had a similar struggle or a similar issue, and he looks into it, and he has more clarity than I do about it because I’m suffering at that moment, so he can find something within his own tradition, some piece of wisdom, and give that to me, and it’s really a gift.

ROLLIN: Both friends have had brushes with extremists. Sedar at one point befriended John Walker Lindh before his capture in Afghanistan. And Charlie was close to a Jewish settler on the West Bank.

CHARLIE: One of the guys that I knew that I studied with for a while, and was a very, very sweet person, ended up getting involved in basically a Jewish terror cell and attempting and thank God failing to do a really horrific act. I came to understand that it’s really just a function of isolation. When you isolate yourself from other — from a diversity of people and a diversity of views, then you can just kind of build your own system, and everything is internally confirming, and everything makes sense to you, and it’s just a closed system, and those closed systems can be very dangerous.

CHARLIE (talking to Sedar at restaurant): Well, what do you think would be like a good step towards resolving that?

SEDAR: I definitely think more of this — more dialogue between you and me and Christians and Jews and Muslims and Zulus. More dialogue.

CHARLIE: You really, you feel strong about the Zulus, that they should be involved in this?

SEDAR (Laughs).

CHARLIE: You always mention the Zulus.

SEDAR: Hey man, you know what? This is why I love you, man. This is why I love you.

]]>The question of whether to ordain gay clergy has challenged and divided many denominations, including Conservative Jews. The Orthodox strongly oppose gay ordination, but reform Jews accept it. Now, the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has recommended that Conservative seminaries should be allowed to admit gays.